Chat history

Your chat messages from Google Chat and downloaded client chats are stored in your Gmail account so you can easily search for them later.

To access your chat history:

Click the Chats label in your Gmail account.

If you don’t see the Chats label in your inbox, go to Settings to make it viewable. In Settings, click Labels and then choose Show next to Chats. This will enable your Chats to show in your inbox.

A list of chats will appear, similar to the way conversations are listed in your inbox. You can then label, star, and trash chats just like Gmail messages.

When you open a chat history, you can reply to the chat by mail, forward by mail, apply labels or print. Go to the top right corner of the chat history page and click the drop-down arrow to show the options. Then choose what you'd like to do.

To search in Chats:

Select the search bar at the top of your Gmail.

Type in the keyword you’d like to find. For example, if you’re looking for the name of the Italian restaurant your friend mentioned in a chat, type "Italian restaurant."

Matching chat conversations will show up along with matching email conversations. All chats are labeled Chats and are marked with the chat icon so you can easily distinguish them from emails.

For the Google Chat history settings, you can turn individual chats off the record, but you'll no longer have the option to turn chat history off for all of your chats. Learn more about going off the record.

To exclude chats from Gmail filters

If you'd like to exclude chats from filters in Gmail, open the drop-down arrow for the search options on the right side of the search box and select the box next to "Don't include chats."

You can also access this by clicking the gear icon for "Settings" and choosing "Filters." Then choose "Edit" for the filter you'd like to edit.